Lead Lit Topic: Guiding Teachers
Here is where you'll find information on guiding teachers.
Results
The Joy of Learning Something New (or How Trying Something New I Totally Stank at Helped Increase My Understanding of the Learning Process)
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I decided I wanted to play roller derby. It could have been while growing up in the '80s and seeing the over-the-top derby...
Uplifting Students’ “Ordinary” Stories with Mentor Texts
As I scroll through social media at the end of each summer, I see pictures of friends in beautiful places—European landmarks, families in a glee-filled heap in front of...
Coaching Minute: Ask for Help
Curriculum director Inga Omondi advises leaders that the best thing for them to do is ask for help.
Getting to Know You . . . More: A Midyear Idea for Helping Kids Tune (Back) In to Each Other
Our social life is a living system, and it needs exercise . . . It’s a choice you make to invest in, week by week, year by year—one that has...
Coaching Minute: What Makes You Come Alive?
Howard Thurman said, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."...
Coaching to Empower
I always have a soft spot for new teachers. I remember my own first few weeks of teaching and the dizzying reorientation of my brain with new details and nuances...
Coaching Minute: Tough Meetings
Curriculum director Inga Omondi understands the tension that can build in meetings. She offers advice for instructional coaches on what to do after a tough meeting.
Let Poetry Be the Leader
Communication and motivation are the keys to strong leadership. I learned this quickly as a young teacher. One of my directors would leave little notes periodically in faculty mailboxes. I...
Play to Your Strengths
When I taught freshman English, we had a brand-new freshman social studies teacher next door. Right away, it felt like we were total opposites. I was an introvert, and he...
Classrooms as Spaces of Identity Development
“The classroom environment serves as a space for identity development where children learn about their humanity, strengths, and justice,” Erica Buchanan-Rivera writes in her book Identity Affirming Classrooms: Spaces that...
Investing in Our Collective Humanity: Nurturing an Intentional Cultural Life
The African philosophy of Ubuntu teaches us a remarkable lesson: that we are human only through the humanity of others. Ubuntu means I am because you are, or We are...
Building Consensus Through Connection
Imagine: A school’s ELA committee has been tasked with creating a list of instructional agreements that will be used in each classroom to guide what is expected of literacy instruction....
The Power of Using a Viewing Lens
Here is the definition of lens from Merriam-Webster: Something that facilitates and influences perception, comprehension, or evaluation Last June, I visited Rocky Mountain National Park with my family. We hiked...
Putting Together Powerful PD
Early in my teaching career, my dad and I taught in the same school for several years. We were both English teachers, and PLC meetings and faculty meetings were always...
Coaching in Community: Co-Creating Learning Spaces (Part I)
People whose teaching lives have been positively impacted by coaching know that coaching can be transformational. However, the other side of the narrative holds just as much truth: Some teachers...
Read Alouds Aren’t Just for Children
I love to start literacy team meetings with a read aloud. It is typically a picture book, although I sometimes select a poem or an excerpt from a novel I...
Learning from Lasso: Cultivating a Coaching Mindset in New Literacy Coaches
In 2021, Ted Lasso won seven Emmy Awards. If you’ve seen the program, just hearing the show’s title likely causes you to smile and then to say, either internally or...
Coaching Minute: Change Can Be Rewarding
Instructional coach Paula Fiscus shares the notion that change is a catalyst for growth. Although change can be difficult and challenging, it is also rewarding.
Reclaiming What It Means to Flourish
These two words are all around me, and I’m going to lose my mind if I hear them again: learning loss. For the ones who get to read this article,...
Purposefully Plan PD to Support Transformational Change
Life is busy, especially in the midst of a school year. Sometimes the only time an educator sits still is for a professional learning meeting. Although they may be sitting...
Shopping in Your Own House: Searching Our Own Teaching Practice for New Ideas
Sometimes when you’re looking for an answer, you search everywhere else before you take a look at what’s right in front of you. —Dean Hughes While I was eating in...
